Vanessa Hudgens loses her famous self in unglamorous role

Vanessa Hudgens immerses herself in role as a pregnant teenager in 'Gimme Shelter'

Updated 1:00 pm, Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Vanessa Hudgens is 16, pregnant and almost unrecognizable in the film "Gimme Shelter."

The actress - who cemented her place in the Disney pantheon via the "High School Musical" franchise - gained 15 pounds, chopped off her hair and disappeared inside baggy clothes, tattoos and piercings. She spends many of her scenes sweaty or teary or bruised. In short, it's the kind of unglamorous part meant to shatter previous perceptions. The sweet story has rough, harrowing edges.

"It's definitely one of those roles that, as an actress, you look for," Hudgens, 25, says. She was recently in Houston to promote the film. "It's something that doesn't come around that often. Stories like this are not told. It's special right off the bat."

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Vanessa Hudgens says...

Original music: There are little, side project things going on that I've been toying around with. But for the most part, acting is definitely, and will always be, my No. 1 priority. Other things are just fun hobbies.

Maternal instinct: That's something that's in your blood. That's what you're put on this Earth to do, to have a child, to continue the legacy, to keep life going. But in no way, shape or form am I interested, in the slightest, as of now. It's gonna be a couple of years.

High School Musical: I think it's a beautiful piece of my past and my history that I'll be able to share with my grandkids. It does seem like a different lifetime. The last one I did eight years ago. But that was my childhood. And it was captured. And the world got to enjoy it. That's very special.

Those HSM songs and dances: I try to forget. I've sung them way too many times. I will know them until the day I die.

"Gimme Shelter," opening Friday, is inspired by actual events and follows Agnes "Apple" Bailey (Hudgens) as she flees an abusive, drug-addicted mother to find her estranged father, a Wall Street hotshot with his new family. Apple's inability to adapt to new surroundings leads her back onto the street, where she's forced to eat from dumpsters and sleep in unlocked cars. She eventually finds her way to a shelter for pregnant teenagers and into the care of den mother Kathy DiFiore (Ann Dowd). The real-life DiFiore founded Several Sources Shelters for women in need after leaving an abusive marriage and finding herself on the street.

The film has strong pro-life and faith messages. James Earl Jones even shows up as a kindly priest who propels the action forward.

"Something just resonated really deeply within me, and I told them that we still stop at nothing until this role is in my hands," Hudgens says. "I feel like the biggest challenge initially was getting the part. It was taxing at times, but it was a fun adventure to be able to dive into.

"If you're gonna do the work, you better go for it 110 percent. Do everything that you can. You only have one shot."

Writer/director Ron Krauss was initially intent on casting an unknown high-schooler in the role, but Hudgens' tenacity won him over. He screened finalists for the role of Apple for an audience of the girls at one of DiFiore's shelters, and they all chose Hudgens as the best on-screen representation of their stories. (Another Disney starlet, AJ Michalka, also auditioned.) Some of the girls and their children even appear in the film as shelter residents.

Once the role was hers, Hudgens went beyond the physical transformation to truly make her mark. She spent two weeks in a shelter, interacting with the girls and getting a feel for their situations.

"The change of environment, staying in the shelter, freaked me out a little bit in the beginning," she says. "There are kids running around, little babies crying, young, young mothers. Kathy is very religious, so there are the Catholic pictures and prayers hanging on the wall.

"When you go into something so head-on, in the beginning, it can be a bit of a shock. That was probably the most uncomfortable I had been."

The shock of the situation worked, allowing Hudgens to completely inhabit the character and connect with the story line while she was on and, often, off set.

"My personal life was at a complete standstill, and I didn't really have it to fall back on. But that's what I wanted," she says. "Just seeing myself in the mirror and not seeing Vanessa, seeing a completely different person was something that really allowed me to embody Apple and push myself in a way that nothing was too far. I was already so far from myself."

Though Hudgens is best known as chirpy "HSM" heroine Gabriella Montez, her recent films have taken more adult turns: a depraved coed in "Spring Breakers"; a stripper and prostitute in "The Frozen Ground"; a gun- and tomahawk-wielding dancer in "Sucker Punch."

What was initially called headline-grabbing provocation, then, now seems more like simple progression of an actress growing into her craft.

The first movie role she had was in "Thirteen," a film about teen girls caught up in drugs, sex and crime.

"That was a crazy independent film," Hudgens says. "I feel like I've had variety in my career. That's always been the goal. And that's gonna continue to be the goal. An interesting story, an interesting character, a good director. Or a cool place to work."